1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for testing road load durability of a rear bed of a truck and a system for testing road load durability of a rear bed of a truck.
2. Background Information
Vehicle body durability testing is an important part of the vehicle development process that evaluates vehicle body structure reliability with respect to long-term road load input. Currently, there are two types of testing method for evaluating durability of a vehicle body, namely, a proving ground test and a road simulator test (bench test). With the proving ground test, a prototype vehicle, and driven on a proving ground for a long period of time (e.g., for several months). With the road simulator test, a prototype vehicle instrumented with various sensors is driven on a proving ground for a relatively short period of time (e.g., for one week) to acquire road load data. Then, a simulator drive file is developed based on the road load data, and the prototype vehicle is tested on a conventional 4-poster road simulator (or other types of road simulator) using the simulator drive files. The conventional methods described above require a complete vehicle (full vehicle) be tested. Therefore, the conventional durability testing methods are costly (i.e. cost of complete prototype vehicles and operational costs) and time consuming. Moreover, the cost and time spent in these conventional durability testing methods become even greater when pickup trucks are developed, mainly due to the variation of cab, bed and wheel base combinations.
In view of the above, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art from this disclosure that there exists a need for an improved test method for the road load durability of a truck rear bed. This invention addresses this need in the art as well as other needs, which will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this disclosure.